"I have a fever caused by agitation and pleasure... I would not like to die until I see and embrace the Victor of the Nile... We are preparing your apartment for against you come... We are be Nelsoned all over." Emma Hamilton had only met Nelson once before she wrote this letter. It had been several years ago and he hadn't made much of an impression, with one-arm, one-eye, 5'6" to her 5'9". He had a large bald patch on his head from where he had been nearly scalped during battle. She, on the other hand, had been George Romney's muse and a darling of the aristocracy. Before the Battle of the Nile in 1798 she wouldn't have looked at him twice. After, he was receiving letters from aristocratic ladies all over the world, and people wore clothing covered with his name, like some 18th century Louis Vuitton, but still, after such a racy letter it was straight to Lady Hamilton's that he turn-tailed and ran for. Their affair, which produced a daughter in 1801, ended with Nelson at Trafalgar.

Kate Williams took much delight in telling the Hay audience all the most intimate details she could dig up on the extraordinary life of Hamilton. The delight was certainly in the telling; far from a censorious historian, she discovered the letter quoted above while researching for her DPhil on seduction. Dressed brightly, and minimally on this cloudy, early morning, her clear identification with her subject reminded me of David Starkey; a man that frustrates breadline university professors by giving guest lectures while sat on a throne, sipping champagne and talking for an hour about how similar he is to Henry VIII.

Hamilton's life is not one that Williams may wish to emulate in its entirety. Having fled to London at thirteen she lived as a pickpocket and whore in Covent Garden before climbing the ladder, hopping onto ever more illustrious beds, came up with the bizarre "attitudes" that Goethe was such a fan of, building up the fame and infamy that made her the victim of satirical prints by the great Gillray until, to cut a remarkable story too short, she found herself on top of Nelson's column.

Following Nelson's death her downfall was swift. The old aristocrats grew tired of her, Nelson's family ignored her and her daughter, and soon she was in the debtor's jail never to return, dead ten years after Trafalgar. She ends, like Susan Kane in the El Rancho cabaret night, where she began, now old, tired and forgotten. Williams, one would hope, will end somewhat happier. How about on BBC 2 doing a show called History's Hussies?